Longtime State Attorney Brad King has announced his retirement and he will likely be remembered in The Villages for the ones who got away.
King, a former Marion County sheriff’s deputy who was first elected in 1988 to serve as chief prosecutor for Sumter, Lake, Marion, Hernando and Citrus counties, made the announcement on Friday. He has indicated he will leave office by Dec. 31. King said he wanted to spend more time with family.
The Republican had pre-filed to run for another term, but then he had a change of heart.
King quietly greased the path for his successor, his office’s executive director William McDonald Gladson, to take over the reins. Gladson was the only candidate to qualify for state attorney for the Fifth Judicial Circuit by Friday’s deadline. That means Gladson will automatically be elected and will take office in January.
In The Villages, King will be remembered for two prominent cases he chose not to vigorously pursue:
• Last year, a man who left a woman to die in The Villages after she fell in 2017 from his golf cart at Brownwood, walked out of a courtroom virtually unpunished thanks to a decision by King’s office. Timothy Jacob Foxworth on May 20 pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges in connection with the July 16, 2017 incident which claimed the life of 51-year-old Shelly Osterhout. The sentence enraged her family, including her father, who wrote a letter a letter to the court in which he decried the prosecutor’s office’s fear of the Foxworth family’s “deep pockets.”
• In 2018, Villagers were stunned when King’s office announced two suspects would not be prosecuted in the 2016 beating death of 26-year-old Austin Stevens at Spanish Springs Town Square. A document from the prosecutor’s office indicated that it has been determined that Stevens was the “initial aggressor” on the night of June 5, 2016. The original police report said teens who had been in a minivan that had passed by Stevens’ workplace had been taunting the McCall’s Tavern employees. Stevens went to the corner at TooJay’s to confront the teens. The original report said one of them ran up behind Stevens and punched Stevens on the side of his head, causing Stevens to fall to the ground and strike the back of his head on the concrete. While on the ground and unresponsive, another teen kicked Stevens in the face, the original report said. Stevens was airlifted to Ocala Regional Medical Center, where he died of injuries suffered during the beating.